BoE questions EU figures showing banks' pullback after Brexit vote

LONDON (Reuters) - The Bank of England has challenged figures from the European Union’s banking watchdog that showed a big drop in EU banks’ exposures to Britain since the Brexit vote.

The European Banking Authority said on Friday that the banks had cut their exposures to assets in Britain by more than 300 billion euros (£268.02 billion) since June 2016, the month Britain voted to leave the EU.

A big chunk of the drop was due to a pullback in derivatives, the EU agency said.

Jon Cunliffe, a deputy governor at the BoE, said on Tuesday the Bank was looking at the EBA numbers.

“We haven’t seen a large impact of that sort,” Cunliffe told a news conference.

The apparent drop may be due to the value of sterling falling since the Brexit vote, Cunliffe said.